Unicorn Toast™ styling

The thing I love about ‘Unicorn Toast’ is how organically it came to be. I never set out to create a trend, I was just playing around in my kitchen and trying to figure out how I could make hot pink cream cheese, as one does. After playing around with all the cream cheese colors and blending them together to create new colors, I loved how they appeared to resemble paint-brush strokes. I called this colorful toast ‘watercolor’ toast in my caption, but my wonderful friends on Instagram quickly dubbed it ‘Unicorn Toast’, as the combination of the pastel hues clearly resembled that of a unicorn’s mane.

After being interviewed by Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue and NY Post, and featured by Daily Mail, MTV, Elle, Elite Daily, Seventeen, Yahoo & more, the unicorn toast thing really took off. I’m now seeing under the hashtag #unicorntoast, that multiple establishments are actually selling this colorful cream cheese toast that I created-pretty crazy. Although I already featured the recipes for the colorful cream cheeses a while back in Toast The Rainbow, I figured it was about time I created an updated post with more specifics about how to blend the colors and create this popular toast.

Creating colorful cream cheese

First off, you have to create the cream cheese colors. By the way, you can follow these exact recipes or you have the freedom to play around and create your own. I don’t really like doing things to an exact science, it’s not my style. I love to be free to experiment and play around and see what I can create. For example, the cream cheese I traditionally make are savory; if you wanted a sweeter toast, you can sub cream cheese for a thick plain yogurt, or simply add a drop or two of your favorite sweetener. Additionally, you can alter the amount of coloring you add and the pigment will change drastically, i.e, add more drops of beet juice and you will have a deep/hot pink, add one or two drops and you will have a pastel pale pink. Here are the recipes for the traditional unicorn toast colors:

**I created each color using about 2 tablespoons of cream cheese (you can use regular or vegan cream cheese)

Hot pink (Beet Juice)

Start out with about 1 teaspoon worth of beet juice and slowly increase the amount until you reach the desired color

Orange/Yellow (turmeric root)

Juice or blend about a 1 inch knob of turmeric root. Add a few drops slowly to the cream cheese until you reach the desired shade of yellow/orange.

Light green (chlorophyll drops)

Start out with about 3 drops of chlorophyll and increase until you have a light shade of green.

Light blue (spirulina powder)

To achieve the light blue color, you need a very tiny amount of spirulina powder, abut 1/4 tsp.

Purple (freeze dried blueberry powder)

Take about a tablespoon worth of freeze dried blueberries and mash them in ziplock bag to create the ‘powder’. Add the powder to your cream cheese little by little until you have the desired shade of purple.

Light pink (beet juice & freeze dried strawberry or raspberry powder)

Take about a tablespoon worth of freeze dried strawberries or raspberries and mash them in ziplock bag to create the ‘powder’. Add to the cream cheese and include a tiny bit of beet juice if you want the pink to really pop.

How to Create Unicorn Toast: A Step By Step Photo Guide:

I like to start with plain cream cheese as a base, because then when you add additional colors and blend them, those colors will mix with the white in certain areas to create more dynamic hues.

Add a dollop of colored cream cheese ** these instructions will be the same for the next few steps

Okay, this is where things start to get interesting. With no particular method or reason, I simply start mixing the colors around. I sometimes use a chopstick, and I sometimes use a butter knife.

This is what it looked like at first, and I didn’t really like it. I added a few more dollops of color where I felt it needed some, (there wasn’t enough blue/green for my liking).

It started to look better…

I added more orange and healthy amount of natural sprinkles. (that’s more like it)

**I added gold leaf flakes for some extra oomph, this was just for photography purposes, I did not eat the gold leaf.

Keeping it a little more simple

So, if you don’t feel like playing around with cream cheese for 30 minutes, and by the way, I never claimed this was a “simple/everyday/ go-to” breakfast choice. I found it so funny that there were articles hating on this toast because they found it to be utterly ridiculous, and after attempting it they were questioning who in the world has the time to make something like this in the morning? The answer: a food stylist having fun and trying to create something interesting. ANYWAYS, I digress….

You can also keep it more simple and just create solid lines of cream cheese like so:

For this next one, I added lines of solid colors and just blended them together slightly:

There you have it, my friends. The secrets behind Unicorn Toast. If you give it a try, please tag me @vibrantandpure or #vibrantandpure / #unicorntoast